What joyous song oflife and love is thine, 
O blackbird fluting from thy gorgeous post 
’Mong my laburnums? May has shed no tear, 
The azure heav’n its every frown has lost, 
But still the lawns night’s glitt’ring dewdrops 
wear, 
The dripping laurels shine : 
Thy preludes ended, now the gladsome strain 
Rings through the lilacs, not an accent 
slurred,— 
That clear quick-uttered whistle never heard 
But childhood at its spell straight lives again ! 
My other songsters ceaseless warble round, 
The lark shovv’rs bubbling music from the sky ; 
Thy mellow treble cleaves their burst of song ; 
A casement opes, and tim’rous thou dost fly, 
We lose thee ; but thou stay’st not silent long,— 
Again that gleeful sound ! 
Or from the ivied gateway now it comes, 
Or softened where the pink-flower’d orchard 
gleams, 
And once again recur my old-world dreams— 
A song of peace to gladden English homes ! 
